Social Security is likely to consider you disabled if your speech can't be understood.

Talk to a Disability Lawyer

There
are many different types of impairments that can interrupt one's ability
to speak and be understood by others, which can affect one's ability to
work. The causes of speech impairments are diverse. They can be caused
by physical impairments, damage to the nerves or part of the brain that
controls speech, or disease, such as Parkinson’s disease or ALS.

Causes of Speech Impairments

Some speech impairments appear in adulthood, including those caused by stroke, traumatic brain injury,
or brain tumors, or those caused by laryngectomy (removal of the
larynx, or voicebox) and glossectomy (removal of the tongue) to treat
cancer caused by smoking or chewing tobacco. Others problems can be
present since childhood, including cleft-palate-caused hyernasality and
cerebral-palsy-caused dysarthria. Any of these problems can make it
difficult to produce useful speech.

Types of Speech Impairments

Some of the types of speech impairments include:

Dysarthria, a physical weakness or paralysis of the speech muscles caused by nerve or brain damage.

Dysprosody, characterized by changes in the intensity of volume, timing of words, and rhythm and intonation of words while speaking.

Articulation disorders, difficulties with physically learning how to produce sounds.

Phonemic disorders,
difficulties learning the different sounds in language and how one
sound may be used in many places. It is common for individuals to have
both articulation and phonemic disorders together.

Apraxia of speech, the inconstant production of sound and the rearranging of sounds within words.

Aphasia, characterized by difficulty using words and sentences.

Muteness, an inability to speak.

Stuttering.

Qualifying for Disability Benefits With a Speech Disorder

If
your speech impairment is so severe that it affects your ability to
function and maintain a job, you may be able to receive Social Security
Disability benefits. You can qualify for Social Security Disability
benefits by doing one of two things.

Meet a listing.
To "meet a listing," you must show that your impairment meets all of
the requirements of a disability listing in the Social Security “Blue
Book,” which is a list that describes impairments that are predetermined
to be disabling.

Be unable to perform any job.
To show an inability to perform any job, you must show that your
impairment limits you so much that you're unable to perform any job
safely due to your impairment. If you have recently lost your ability to
speak effectively and you can't do your prior work, Social Security
will look at your age, education level, and work experience to see if
you can adjust to other types of work.

Meeting a Disability Listing

There
is a disability listing in the Blue Book that specifically addresses
loss of speech (2.09). To meet the listing, your medical records must
show that you have an inability to produce speech that can be:

heard

understood, and

sustained.

If
you are able to use esophageal speech or electronic devices such as an
electrolarynx to articulate well enough to be heard and understood, you
won't meet this listing. You don't need to have a specific cause
of the speech impairment to meet this listing; the only important
information is that your speech is not effective for communicating with
others.

Note that if your speech problems are due to stroke, TBI, or cerebral palsy, your impairment will likely be evaluated under the stroke listing, the TBI listing, or the cerebral palsy listing. If your speech problem is due to a mental disorder, your impairment will be evaluated under the mental illness listings.
Only if your speech difficulties are related to the physical structures
of speech (the larynx, tongue, and pharynx) will Social Security use
the loss of speech listing to evaluate your speech impairment.

How Speech Affects Your Ability to Work

If
you don't meet the requirements of the listing for loss of speech or
another listing, but your speech impairment is considered severe (it has
more than a minimal effect on your ability to do work activities),
Social Security must assess how your impairment affects your work by
using a Residual Functional Capacity (RFC) form. Your RFC assessment
will include your ability to hear, speak, feel, or adapt to your
environment. For those with speech impairments, a severe communication
barrier would make it difficult to complete many tasks, including
talking on the phone, speaking with customers or coworkers, receiving
direction from supervisors, or otherwise interacting with individuals in
any way that requires speech.

Your RFC might also assess your
mental abilities, which include your ability to understand and complete
tasks in a timely fashion, interact properly with those you work with,
respond properly to supervision, and properly handle the stresses
present at work. Your inability to be understood may hinder your ability
to understand tasks, especially if you can't ask questions to gain a
better understanding of what you need to do. Additionally, the inability
to be understood may increase your anxiety and frustration and thus
affect your ability to properly respond to others in appropriate ways.

If
you have other physical impairments, your RFC might also assess your
physical abilities. For instance, if your speech impairment is caused by
a greater disease or illness such as a traumatic brain injury (TBI),
other physical impairments caused by the TBI will be included.

At
the least, your RFC should state that you can't do work requiring good
speech, such as a teacher, a salesperson, a police dispatcher, or a disc
jockey. If your prior job required good speech, or even had a unique
feature that required special voice abilities, and you can no longer do
the job because of your speech problem, Social Security will assess
whether there is other work you can do. If you are older and don't have
much education or transferable job skills, Social Security may not
expect you to adjust to another type of work. For more information, see
our article on medical-vocational disability allowances.